Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

swedenherald.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 283 posts

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#271

Post by tuukkah »

genewitch wrote: post #264
tuukkah wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there are multiple reasons. For one, the apk files include a digital signature and you won't have Signal's and Google's private keys available to recreate their signatures.

Thank you for this nice response. Did you already know or did you look it up? please don't tell me you just copied and pasted my question into an input form somewhere and it gave a bunch of reasons... i should have done that.

I was interested in this so I had a look at the tools.

Now that I asked ChatGPT, it didn't include this reason - perhaps it's too obvious and no-one has written it down before.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#272

Post by tremon »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #254
tremon wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you know that it is always the government that will put you in prison, or send you to war You're merely playing word games here. A person keeping another human being against their will is called slavery or abduction instead of prison. Similarly, it's only called war when it's a government doing it, otherwise it's called activism, terrorism, or gang warfare (note the overload of the term). The main difference between…

Why do you presupose I am a US citizen?

Because you're repeating the typical US defeatist trope that government is other people. That attitude is how democracy dies. FSM help us all.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#273

Post by kikokikokiko »

tremon wrote: post #272
kikokikokiko wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you presupose I am a US citizen?

Because you're repeating the typical US defeatist trope that government is other people. That attitude is how democracy dies. FSM help us all.

I'm brazilian. My complete and utter disdain for any trust whatsoever put on goverment (i.e. government officials, i.e. people) comes from hard earned experience. I would rather leave my life in the hands of an "evil" corporation than any bureaucrat.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#274

Post by red-iron-pine »

bee_rider wrote: post #109
metayrnc wrote: post #3

> The Armed Forces, on the other hand, are negative and write in a letter to the government that the proposal cannot be realized "without introducing vulnerabilities and backdoors that can be exploited by third parties First time I am seeing an organization against this. Kudos to them for standing up.

TOR was sort of famously contributed to by a dude in US Naval research early on, right? They are militaries, not police or intelligence forces. The job is to be ready to do war, not nanny and snoop on civilians (Some of that might be a necessary side effect but it isn’t their reason for being).

US Navy research labs developed onion routing and the core of Tor

arguably, one of the reasons it was released to the public was to get large amounts of traffic using onion routing. because if it's just 50 data steams that are entirely ONI or NSA then it's easy to hit them with timing attacks.

but 2+ million streams from all over makes it a lot easier to hide.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#275

Post by tremon »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #273
tremon wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're repeating the typical US defeatist trope that government is other people. That attitude is how democracy dies. FSM help us all.

I'm brazilian. My complete and utter disdain for any trust whatsoever put on goverment (i.e. government officials, i.e. people) comes from hard earned experience. I would rather leave my life in the hands of an "evil" corporation than any bureaucrat.

It seems you have already accepted your subjugation. So it shall be, then.

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#276

Post by Release0381 »

EasyMark wrote: post #257
nickslaughter02 wrote: post #69

FYI the EU wide proposal to scan all your private messages using an AI agent on your devices also originated in Sweden by EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson in 2022. > EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson has also been heavily criticised regarding the process in which the proposal was drafted and promoted. A transnational investigation by European media outlets revealed the close involvement of foreign technology and law enfor…

is there some fascist movement in Sweden that I haven't heard about?

Yeah, the Social Democrats, whose member she is

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#277

Post by shalmanese »

hx8 wrote: post #111
disruptiveink wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google ultimately did that for China. The outcome in that case is that the domestic market filled in the gaps, while complying to all relevant authoritarian legislation. I do not believe that the same would happen for every market where these stunts are being pulled off, at least not to the same level of quality. Why are European countries trying to pull one off from the China playbook, while simultaneously being sho…

Having to build local alternatives probably had a positive impact on China's software industry. We're at a point today that major Chinese software/tech companies are routinely talked about on nightly news.

India banning TikTok did not have the same effect on the Indian software market [1]. The local competitors that cropped up were mostly disappointing and didn't outcompete YT/Instagram.

Similarly, the benefits of Sweden banning Signal would most likely accrue to WhatsApp, not any indigenous software company.

[1] https://restofworld.org/2022/tiktok-sized-hole-in-india/

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#278

Post by nickslaughter02 »

Just in case you are counting, there's another proposal in France to force backdoors:

> At Tuta, we are deeply concerned about the proposed amendment to the so-called "Narcotrafic" law, which would force encrypted communication providers to implement backdoors for law enforcement. This would threaten everybody’s security and privacy and could be in conflict with European data protection legislation and Germany's IT Security Act. We urge the French National Assembly to reject this dangerous amendment. A backdoor for the good guys only is not possible.

> France is about to amend a bill against drug trafficking, the “Narcotrafic” law, which will force encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp to backdoor the encryption for being able to hand over decrypted chat messages of suspected criminals within 72 hours of the request. In order to enforce it, the text provides for a “fine of EUR 1.5 million for natural persons and a fine of up to 2% of the annual world turnover for legal persons”. The amendment has already been passed by the Senate and is now moving fast to the National Assembly.

https://tuta.com/blog/france-surveillance-nacrotrafic-law

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#279

Post by mathfailure »

mcherm wrote: post #11
mathfailure wrote: post #5

[flagged]

The US does not have a law requiring all messaging applications to store historical messages and provide access for law enforcement to decrypt and view all messages. The US may (or may not) be capable of decrypting Signal messages themselves -- but that is a different issue. The US does not (currently... it HAS been discussed previously) ban the use of any particular encryption techniques because US agencies are inca…

The law? Not even US president cares about the law, then why would 3 letter agencies do?

Re: Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

#280

Post by mathfailure »

bayindirh wrote: post #6
mathfailure wrote: post #5

[flagged]

> Or do they want us to believe 3-letter U.S. agencies don't have access to Signal right now? Is this some publicity stunt? [Citation needed]

You have to think from time to time.

If there are even NDAs that forbid mentioning their existence - how would you cite them?

And here we're talking about 3-letter agencies in U.S.

Of course they have the access and of course you can't ever prove it. One could even argue that Julian Assange didn't leak anything and it's all lies and he can't prove it, lol.

Post reply on HN